Timed messaging lets you set how long your BBM contacts have access to messages and photos you share with them in a chat. Before you send a message or a photo, you just tap on the timer icon and choose the duration over which you’d like to allow the recipient to view it. “The message is hidden until the recipient touches and holds on the chat,” BlackBerry notes. “Then, once the timer has expired (or if the recipient takes their finger off the screen), the message is no longer visible.”

As for message retraction, it, of course, lets you retract a message for whatever reason, thereby removing it from both your chat history and the recipient’s. To retract a message in BBM, just hold on the message and select the new retract option in the contextual menu.

Check out BBM’s timed messaging and message retraction features in action:

Note that the new timed messaging and message retraction capabilities are premium features that are available for free and without limitations over the next three months only. Thereafter, they will be available as part of a yet to be fully outlined BBM subscription.